The Gloʔal Whaʔ – A Pronunciation Guide to the Glottal Stop.

The glottal stop is a very common sound in British English; you’ve definitely heard it even if you haven’t heard of it. How often a native speaker uses it depends on their accent and how fast they are speaking. All the glottal stops in this article are in red, so let’s make a start, then.

Glottal Stops in English Accents

Possibly the most notable feature of the glottal stop is the inconsistent way native speakers use it. It is difficult to give a rule for any particular accent because everybody from Cockneys in East London to the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace will use it differently and a little bit randomly in their speech.

Cockney

Cockney speakers love glottal stops, they use them for /t/, /p/ and /k/:

Blackboard daughter waiting stop it tricky

Note that in cockney the glottal stop is used before unstressed vowel sounds – this is one of the most recognisable features of a cockney accent, but is considered by many not to be acceptable in standard pronunciation.

Estuary & Other Regional Accents

Estuary speakers are somewhere between GB and cockney, and their glottal stop usage reflects this. They would use a glottal stop for /t/ in all the places GB speakers do, but they would also use them at the end of a word even when followed by a vowel sound:

that isn’t right it’s hot I didn’t there’s not a lot of money

This usage of a glottal stop before vowel sounds isn’t confined to London, it‘s pretty common in loads of regional English accents, like in Manchester. In Bristol you’ll hear it as well, we don’t say the ‘t’s at the end normally.

Posh Accents

Old fashioned posh speakers might find the glottal stop sounds incorrect to their ears and so they might not think they use it at all for /t/. But they do sometimes, especially when /t/ is followed by a consonant sound. See, I just did it then, and again then. In fact even the poshest of all speakers, Her Majesty The Queen likes the occasional dabble¹:

Modern posh is a bit more relaxed, so you’ll certainly hear younger speakers using glottal stops all the time before consonant sounds and occasionally before vowel sounds too. Have a listen to Prince William, who could be crowned ‘king of the glottal stop’ one day:

“I certainly don’t lie awake waiting or hoping for it because it sadly means that my family have moved on and I don’t want that.”²

Tottenham Court Road

One of the hardest London underground stations for second language English speakers to pronounce is ‘Tottenham Court Road’ – it’s all those ‘t’s that make it difficult, so the appropriate use of a glottal stop can make it a lot easier. The way to simplify it is to break it into syllables:

Advice for Learners of English

The glottal stop is not a separate sound (phoneme) in English, so you don’t need to use it in order to produce the entire range of English vocabulary. It is, however, a very distinguishable feature of English accents, so learners who are aiming to produce British pronunciation in connected speech need to know how and when to produce it.

One little question, though. Isn’t “hit man” an example of assimilation /hɪpmæn/ rather than a glottal stop? Or does that also depend on regional accents? How are they different (assimilation and glottal stop)?

There are different ways of explaining the way /t/ joins to other consonant sounds. If the next sound is one of /p,b,m/ then you could represent the /t/ as an unreleased /p/ so /ˈhɪpmæn/.

In practice, even if this happens, a speaker is likely to put a glottal stop before the /p/, so it would be [ˈhɪʔp̚mæn]. It can be fun to explore these with students – BAPMAN vs BATMAN, HEARTBURN vs HARP BURN, HOT PRESS vs HOP PRESS, with each pair pronounced identically in connected speech if you use the unreleased /p/.

These assimilations can happen in any accent, particularly in fast connected speech. The glottal stop is one possible assimilation of /t/, and is also found in sequences that are assimilations of /t/ like the one above.

Thanks! I’m glad to hear it’s helped. Actually, you have one in your comment there “SURE IF”! Linking /r/ is so widespread now, I think the debate about whether it’s correct is over. There are a few places left where people aren’t sure though – in words like PAWING – does that sound the same as POURING when you say it?